UCLA Applied Mathematics Professor Andrea Bertozzi, a longstanding collaborator and friend of IMS, was awarded an honorary doctorate at the 2014 CGU Commencement. At the Commencement Forum, Professor Bertozzi spoke of mathematics as the mechanism for translating innovation into practice, in the era of big data where previously qualitative disciplines are increasingly confronted with mathematical challenges.

Jorge X. Velasco-Hernandez, who received his PhD from CGU in 1991, has been elected Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). This award recognizes his distinguished contributions in mathematical epidemiology of infectious diseases and in mathematics applied to industry problems. Dr. Velasco-Hernandez is a Professor of Mathematics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Mohamed El-Doma, who received his PhD from CGU in 1986, published the book Daphnia: Biology and Mathematics Perspectives. The book introduces and analyzes size-structured population dynamics models for several species of Daphnia, which are small planktonic crustaceans, while also describing biological features of these organisms. Dr. El-Doma is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Khartoum in Sudan.

Lu Zhu is CGU’s first student to graduate with a PhD in Financial Engineering. She starts a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Wisconsin in Fall 2014.

Engineering & Industrial Applied Math PhD student Shahab Taherian, together with his InFluidS design team, won CSULB's annual Innovation Challenge for their creation of a non-invasive diagnostic tool for pulmonary physicians. The team was awarded $10,000 in seed money and up to $40,000 for additional services in starting a business to commercialize this tool. Earlier, Shahab won first place in the 2013 CSULB Annual Student Research Competition.

Professor Marina Chugunova was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor as of July 1, 2015. Among her other honors, she has also been appointed as a member of the Scholarships and Fellowships Selection Committee for Mathematical Sciences in Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) for the year ending June 30, 2016. Professor Marina Chugunova was awarded a Collaboration Grant for Mathematicians from the Simons Foundation.